Danske Bank integrates the analysis of customer insights with the choice of communication channel. Everything happens in one tool based on software from SAS Institute. The result is strong, and the effect measurable, however the journey is not over yet.

Match the right message with the right customers; choose the channel - mail, online banking, email, mobile app, contact from the call center or meeting with a bank advisor; and then measure the effect afterwards. These simple steps could suggest that it is easy for a company to optimize customer contact through one-to-one communication and campaigns. However, when the company has around 3 mill. customers, many phone advisors located in five different call centers and over 3,000 financial advisors divided in branches in five countries, the complexity rapidly begins to grow. When further adding the IT challenges of getting different systems and data formats to ‘talk’ to each other in order to create crucial customer insight, you begin to get the idea of the complexity that Danske Bank faces.

Experience clearly shows us that the more specific we can be in our message to the customer, and the better we are at showing that we understand the environment and situation, the customer is in, the more value we can put into our recommendations, the happier our customers will be

Simon Steen-Petersen,
Global Head of Marketing for Personal Banking at Danske Bank

To Danske Bank, being a bank no longer equals just informing customers about the products on the shelves, but rather to provide the best possible service. The bank knows that fixed-rate loans and retirement savings are not what the customers dream about. These products are merely instruments that can help customers to achieve their dreams, whatever the dream may be i.e. a new house, a new car, children, or a trip around the world.

Danske Bank’s vision is not only to recommend the right solution for the customer when he or she calls. Through data, the bank wants to be able to anticipate a customer’s needs even before the customer makes contact. By analyzing data and insights based on customer behavior, bank employees want to be able to advice customers proactively about the economic decisions that are associated with the life situations they find themselves in.

A bank with extraordinary serviceWith the implementation of the Multi-Channel Tool solution, which SAS Institute has developed in cooperation with Danske Bank, the bank is already well on its way towards the goal. The solution makes it possible for the bank to interact with the customer on the customer's terms and through the channels that the customer prefers, whether it is e-mail, online banking, or on the phone. By working from this omni-channel approach and thinking all the channels together, the bank ensures that the customer will get the same advice, and meet the same messages, regardless of which channel the customer uses. At the same time, the team that works with the tool provides branches and call centers with a great number of leads to pursue daily, as well as ensures targeted and personalized exposures to customers through banner ads and promotional campaigns.

"We view our vision and the way we work, as no less than revolutionary. Very few companies our size can control one-to-one customer contact as quickly and efficiently as we do. The Multi-Channel tool provides us with a strong engine which is the foundation of our dialogue activities," says Simon Steen-Petersen, who is Global Head of Marketing for Personal Banking at Danske Bank.

For this reason, Simon Steen-Petersen does not look to competitors in the Nordic region and internationally for ideas on how to improve the way they work. Instead, inspiration for improvements is found in companies like Amazon, Nemlig.com and Facebook. To Danske Bank, these companies are service visionaries because of how they utilize customer insights to provide a great service - namely by proactively suggesting targeted and relevant recommendations continuously to their customers. It is precisely this level of service that Danske Bank wants to offer to its customers.

We view our vision and the way we work, as no less than revolutionary. Very few companies our size can control one-to-one customer contact as quickly and efficiently as we do. The Multi-Channel tool provides us with a strong engine which is the foundation of our dialogue activities

Simon Steen-Petersen,
Global Head of Marketing for Personal Banking at Danske Bank

Fast execution with high success rates
Simon Steen-Petersen points out the fact that a lead, which is to be processed by a branch, is not delivered separate from other communications in a spreadsheet or an e-mail. A lead, found through the analytical processing of customer data, "lands" in the advisor's screen view of daily work, in which he or she can directly click and take action by contacting the customer. At the same time, the marketing team ensures that the customer is exposed to messages that address this same topic.

In one example of a successful campaign, the bank achieved a very high response rate when entire nine percent of the defined target group, had a meeting with a bank advisor as a direct result of the campaign. The analysts decided on a target group that the bank historically did not have much contact with, but who all had the characteristics to become key customers. These were often singles with high income at an age at which they may soon start a family and make a number of big financial choices regarding buying a house, a car and having children. The analysts defined the group based on data from contact history, income, age, credit score and more.

The customer's needs controls the communication
The Multi-Channel solution from SAS enables Danske Bank to constantly optimize their work with customer insight and allows the bank to improve and correctly target communication to customers. "Experience clearly shows us that the more specific we can be in our message to the customer, and the better we are at showing that we understand the environment and situation, the customer is in, the more value we can put into our recommendations, the happier our customers will be", says Simon Steen-Petersen. He emphasizes that data collection is an important instrument in getting these important insights which in turn is turned into value and relevant service to each customer, and thus be of great benefit to him or her.

The strategic work of continuously try to get better at collecting data and to transform them into customer insight, will continue. This analytical work is precisely where the solution from SAS is crucial. "Our vision of being able to promise our customers that we, at anytime, have complete control over their economic situation, is a bold promise and a big job in terms of data. It will require analysis of much more data than what we utilize today, but that is the goal and that is where we want to be", concludes Simon Steen-Petersen.

Challenge

To gain greater customer insight by analyzing data in order to provide better advice and service to Danske Bank's customers.

Solution

The SAS® -based Multi-Channel Tool was integrated into the existing platform from the beginning.

Benefits

Fast and efficient one-to-one communication tool that improves the dialogue with the customer.

Possibility of showing proactivity in relation to the client's financial situation.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.